Rough and opinionated comparison of Supportish tier 8 and 9s
By
Arondell,
Posted on: 2011-06-07 19:09 in Archetypes and Powers General Discussion
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Poison's Poison trap. The only power in the game with a 30% chance to do NOTHING each time you cast it. Ouch.|
Originally Posted by Rigel_Kent
Everyone forgets the green-headed stepchild of buff/debuff sets.
Poison Poison Trap/Noxious Gas. One is like Mass Hypnosis, except with an interruptible sandwich break animation time, aggro, no range, and not much duration. One is an unenhanceable debuff aura that requires you to maneuver a pet into melee, a very long recharge time, a high endurance cost, and again, not much duration. Now, to be fair and balanced, I'll say something nice about these powers. They're better than Intimidate, and almost as good as Group Fly. Yay. |
Noxious Gas. Only targets pets, not players. Only effective on melee pets. Numbers are better on higher tier pets so it doesn't even work well for all Mastermind sets.
Poor Poison. Noxious is good in some really specific settings, but really could use a wider range of usage.
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This tells only one side of the story. The flip side to the ally only targeting was that it had a fast recharge, 10 seconds I think, and a 100% chance to disorient for seven seconds. This meant with minimal(2-3) slotting you could easily use it to perma disorient bosses. As I recall the reason they changed it to ally targeting wasn't because the devs thought it sucked but because on *masterminds* this was an overpowered ability. If the old version had been knockdown rather then knockback it would have been an awesome power. I still thought it was pretty good.|
Originally Posted by Oedipus_Tex
I think Repulsion Bomb may have one of the sadder histories of powers in the game. The current version is actually buffed from what it was previously--a mind bogglingly awful power which required you to target a teammate. The power would sloooowly travel to the ally and when it finally arrived, knock enemies back from around them. Basically like a one shot version of Sonic Repulsion with a 3 second root time each time you used it in addition to travel time. When it was converted to basically an (incredibly mediocre) AoE blast, it kept this excruciating cast time because its not one of the things considered in calculating damage. What's more concerning though is that when the possibility of change was brought up, there were people fighting Castle about the loss of knockback in this piece of cracker jacks power.
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[Edit 1]The people who argued to prevent the change weren't complaining for the sake of knockback. More like they hated loosing the powerful disorient and the huge recharge nerf. On a team you could reduce the incoming damage a hell of a lot more with the old version then with the new version.
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Is this your uninformed position or were you being intentionally inflammatory? 8600+ posts and you are stating that a forcefielder is replaced by two players or either of two? Neither of which is true.
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Originally Posted by Jibikao
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Force Field is just very limited. Sure, it has some soft controls but knockback is almost completely ignored against an AV and knockbacks can disturb offense. I would rank Force Field as the worst support set in the game because it can easily replaced by Cold Domination and a SoA with double Maneuver who also brings so much more offense to the team. Force Field is good early on when people don't have set bonuses for defense. |
Triumphant Defenders Forever
Psylenz FF/Psi, ArticQuark Storm/Rad, Symon BarSisyphus Bots/psn, Max VanSydow Thugs/Dk, Cyclone Symon Bots/stm, Blue Loki Ice/Cd, Widow 46526
HelinCarnate:OMG it is so terrible. I have the option to take 3 more powers but no additional slots. Boo F'ing hoo.
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You're right, sort of; I'm conflating history. The power appears to have been changed at least twice. This is the statement Castle made when he changed the power to the most recent version in around January 2008:|
Originally Posted by Arondell
This tells only one side of the story. The flip side to the ally only targeting was that it had a fast recharge, 10 seconds I think, and a 100% chance to disorient for seven seconds. This meant with minimal(2-3) slotting you could easily use it to perma disorient bosses. As I recall the reason they changed it to ally targeting wasn't because the devs thought it sucked but because on *masterminds* this was an overpowered ability. If the old version had been knockdown rather then knockback it would have been an awesome power. I still thought it was pretty good.
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| Force Fields has a couple powers which are unpopular, repulsion bomb being one. Of those, Repulsion bomb was the easiest to address, since it already had a good list of options. I started by increasing the damage; which you guys are seeing now. I then changed KB to KD, and stripped Containment bonuses from it -- changes which haven't hit the Training Room yet. |
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Originally Posted by Bus_Driver
It's kinda dumb to judge an entire powerset by looking at just the last two powers. Some sets are late bloomers like Kinetics. Other sets get their useful powers earlier. For example, compare the first five Kinetic powers to the first five powers of Traps or Sonic Resonance.
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Not to sound snarky, but its also kinda dumb to have clearly missed the part where I said I was trying to compare the two FINAL tier powers, not the entire set. And that is it..MY opinion. I dont mind if people dont agree, I enjoyed how people viewed the powers on their own builds. Again..their opinions. I wasnt trying to do a hardcore number crunching, this powers better than that power, post. I was just musing
And sorry for missing Poison...I think I was trying for corr/fender/troller support type sets.
[EDIT: I'm sorry if that seems harsh. My point is that I'm really, really tired of hearing about how all it takes is "skill" to make Force Field work when I have never, ever seen this in action. This is the "science fiction" I was refering to; big talk on the boards about how effective FF's knockback "can be" without anyone acually able to produce an example. If this cryptid exists, lets see it. If not, the people who have consistently held FF back by arguing that KB "just requires skill" need to step aside so this set can be made more appropriate for the game as it is today.]
[EDIT2: I'd also like to find out if any of the people who fought tooth and nail to keep Repulsion Bomb the way it originally was actually do run around with that power slotted for knockback out of protest for the fact it was changed. For some reason I have a strong feeling they don't exist despite the gnashing of teeth that went on during that set of discussions.]